Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Iran and nuclear diplomacy

Will Russia help, or just get in the way?

COULD Russia yet succeed where the European trio of Britain, France and Germany seem to have failed, in getting Iran to give up its plans to enrich uranium? Or has President Vladimir Putin just offered the Iranians a reprieve from the diplomatic pressure that has been building ever since their long-hidden nuclear activities were first discovered three years ago?In September, the 35-nation board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog, formally found Iran “in non-compliance” with nuclear safeguards. The board will meet again next week. Its own statutes say the next step ought to be to refer Iran's transgressions to the UN Security Council. Iran wants to avoid that. But it wants to keep its nuclear programme intact too.

Russia's idea—for Iran to continue converting natural uranium into gas at its restarted conversion plant at Isfahan, but then ship the stuff to Russia for enrichment—is not new. The Europeans, for their part, had hoped for better: to persuade Iran out of the uranium-dabbling business altogether. But in August, Iran's new government abruptly waved away their proffered inducements, restarted work in Isfahan and so brought negotiations to a halt.

When Igor Ivanov, chief of Mr Putin's national security council, took Russia's compromise to Tehran a week ago, he also got a public brush-off. Iran insists it will enrich its own uranium, for fuel for (as yet unbuilt) power reactors, even though almost everyone else suspects it of wanting to use the same technology for bomb-making. But Iran has since signalled that it will give Russia's idea more thought.

Western diplomats are sceptical that Iran intends any compromise. Such a deal would anyway be hard to achieve: there must be cast-iron guarantees that Iran would not gain access to dangerous enrichment skills through a joint venture with Russia. In the past, Russian scientists have quietly helped Iran with dubious technologies—including blueprints for a heavy-water “research” reactor that would be too big for its stated purpose, too small for electricity generation, but about ideal for making plutonium—another bomb ingredient. A number of Russian companies have been penalised under American law for aiding Iran's missile-building too.

By supposedly considering the Russian idea, Iran may simply hope to escape further IAEA censure. A new inspectors' report on November 18th was expected to show that it has been a bit more forthcoming. But inspectors have more questions, especially about potentially militarily useful help Iran received in the past, including from the network run by Pakistan's Abdul Qadeer Khan. America, meanwhile, has again been showing around documents that purport to be Iranian design work on a missile nose-cone of a sort that that could carry a nuclear warhead. Not reassuring.